This blog discusses the historical reliability of the Bible, the creation/evolution debate and apologetics in general.

Sunday, 14 February 2010

”165 million”-year-old spider looks just like today’s spiders

The spider recently found in China might have spun a web like this. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

Researchers have found a spider fossil assumed to be 165 million years old in northern China. Named Eoplectreurys gertschi, it is “120 million” years older than the oldest known spider.

Paul Selden, a palaeontologist at the University of Kansas, and colleagues published the discovery in the journal Naturwissenschaften on February 6. In addition to the exceptionally well preserved spider fossil, they also found salamanders, small mammals, crustaceans and insects.

Selden was astonished at how little spiders have changed since the days of the Eoplectreurys. “Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer,” he said.

Darwinists often define evolution as change but for instance dragonflies, squid, Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs and tuataras have hardly remembered to change, although they have had more time at their disposal than the early mammals who supposedly turned into men.

Once again, we notice how reluctant animals are to evolve. Not even the assumed millions of years have been able to bring about change from one kind to another.